


Unbound (Expanded)

by sevedra



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Canon Divergence- Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), M/M, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Soul Bond, Soulmates, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-22
Updated: 2018-05-22
Packaged: 2019-05-10 08:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14733482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevedra/pseuds/sevedra
Summary: What If: Bucky and Tony were soulmates during Infinity War?extended version of my previous story Unbound. I used about 85% of the original and then doubled the length.





	Unbound (Expanded)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [unbound](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14503629) by [sevedra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevedra/pseuds/sevedra). 



Throughout the fight, Bucky watched and waited for Tony to arrive.

T’Challa and Okoye had come to the farm and brought the new arm. He had known what it meant. _I don’t do that anymore._ Tony had already explained about the aliens through the portal over New York. He knew they were coming. T’Challa would have never asked Bucky to fight again for anything less. _It always ends in a fight._ So, Bucky put on the arm and went to the front lines. He stood beside Steve. _You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?_ He ran with Natasha and the Dora Milaje. _I need you to do it one more time._ He faced his fears and fought like the world depended on him. Because he knew that it did.

The past two years, he had lived a peaceful life. He’d been in cryo for a much shorter period than he’d expected. Waking up, fearing a decade or more had passed, finding T’Challa’s genius sister smiling at him and assuring him it had only been a few weeks. A few weeks! Shuri had already developed a technology to remove the trigger words and HYDRA programming from his mind. He was left with terrible nightmares when his memories had all returned.

T’Challa had given him a place to stay, away from the city. A serene spot with a hut surrounded by fields of beautiful pasture land. And several kids for company, both tiny goats and small children who came by to visit nearly every day. It had been exactly what he needed. But the memories of HYDRA were 70 years of blood and the memories of Bucky before HYDRA were less than 30 years of peace. So, terrible, recurring nightmares.

Tony Stark had come to Wakanda, bringing the BARF technology with him to help Bucky recover. Shuri had removed the triggers, but the BARF had helped him deal with the years of trauma. It wasn’t perfect. Sometimes the BARF sessions triggered nightmares themselves. Usually, the memories were controllable. But the way HYDRA had wiped his mind, he was left with times when memories overlapped, and he couldn’t separate them due to confusion. Those times, unexpected things would intrude on the carefully planned memory recreation. It was a lot of work and took months to finish.

Both Tony and Shuri had offered numerous times to make him a new arm. He had known that they both had plans and blueprints waiting in the wings. He’d turned them down every time. He was happy without the arm. It was a weapon. A heavy, painful reminder of all that HYDRA had done. Of all that he had done. Living without the arm felt like a burden had been lifted. Not just from his body, but from his soul. Almost like the weight of the metal was part of the weight of his guilt. He didn’t need an arm for the life he was choosing to lead. A life of peace. Away from society and conflict.

The soul bond igniting between Tony and himself had been a surprise. A red string of fate that shimmered into being when he least expected it. Without the HYDRA programming in the way, Bucky’s mind managed to heal enough to activate the connection with his mate. He’d thought he’d never find his soulmate. He’d thought he’d die in the war, and then he thought HYDRA had drug him far enough into the future that he would have outlived any possible match. This thing with Tony was a blessing. A gift. Tony returned to Wakanda frequently, at least weekly for the past year and a half, and learned to farm with Bucky. And upgraded everything he could find on the farm to make the farming “better”.

No one had mentioned Tony when Bucky had been brought to the city wearing his new arm. He had asked Steve, but he’d just looked away and shook his head. Missing. Missing wasn’t an answer that Bucky could understand. If the world was at stake, if the aliens were here, then this was where Tony would be. And yet, he was nowhere to be seen. He hadn’t noticed, in the internal uproar of preparing to go back into a war, that his red string had faded in appearance. Not in color, but in its apparent tangibility. Tenuous. It was as though it was phasing out. The bond between them was almost gone. It had become so thin and weak that Bucky was afraid Tony was hurt, wherever he was. There was nothing he could do about that now though. So, he fought. He ran. He dodged. And he fought some more.

He submerged his fears. He chose to embrace the gift of the arm and the familiar weight of a gun in it. He knew the world was in peril. Knew that the fight he was in was worth so much more than Wakanda alone. These creatures were from the other side of the universe. They had come to wipe out humanity and take over the Earth. At least, that was what he took away from the battle brief. Some god from space had lost his mind and decided that half the universe had to die. A cleanse. And Earth was in his path. So, Bucky put everything he had into it. Failure was simply not an option.

And at the end, he saw Thanos blink out of existence. It was over. Finally. He hadn’t seen all of what had happened, but if the bad guy was gone…if the leader of the alien army was no longer here, then surely it was over. They were still alive. It should have been a relief. But Tony had still never shown.

Bucky stepped toward Steve. He had to ask again. He needed to know where Tony was. He needed to find Tony and make sure he was safe, too. He barely managed Steve’s name before the weightless feeling began. His entire body felt half its usual weight in an instant. His mind felt as though it were widening, the atoms moving away from each other. He looked down at his body, saw himself floating apart. Dust to ashes to nothingness. He never even felt the bond between them snap.

\----

Some horrifying monsters from space had come to New York. Tony had known this would happen. And I all happened so quickly. One minute he was in Strange’s Sanctum, then the street, then flying toward space (don’t think of the portal, don’t think of the portal) and then a spaceship going who knew where.

Titan was red and dusty and dead. The SpiderKid was here. Strange was cryptic. And the new team that had shown up consisted of one blockhead, one asshole, and one crazy chick. Thanos was actually going to kill them all. One chance in over 14 million. And when Tony was dying and Thanos was on the edge of victory, Strange pushed him right over into the win. He handed him the infinity stone, saving Tony’s life. When Tony’s life held no weight on the scale against the balance of the Earth, the universe.

His soulmate was on Earth. He was trapped here on this alien planet. He had no idea how he would ever return home. Bucky was so far away his presence in the back of Tony’s consciousness was minuscule. The bond stretched so far and so thin as to be almost nonexistent. He couldn’t feel Bucky through the bond. He could only feel the slight warmth that signified their usual place in each other’s hearts. A small glowing ember, not anything like the normal fire of their bond.

When T’Challa had called and told him they had removed the triggers and programming from Barnes, Tony had been relieved. He’d gotten over his initial burst of black rage and seen the logic of Barnes’ inability to control his actions. Knowing that the situation could never present itself again was a balm on his conscience. When Shuri had called again a few weeks later to ask for his help with Barnes’ continuous and severe nightmares, Tony had barely hesitated before agreeing to bring his BARF technology to Wakanda. For six months he’d spent every other week in Wakanda working with Barnes until Bucky could finally sleep through the night.

Somewhere along the line, they’d become much more than engineer and patient. It hadn’t taken long before they’d established a tenuous friendship. A couple months passed by and that had grown to a much stronger closeness. When Bucky started featuring in Tony’s own dreams, he’d realized that what he felt was more than friendship. Near the end of the BARF treatments, Tony had felt a pull in his mind and a glowing warmth in his heart. His wrist had tingled. When he looked down, a thick red yarn-like line connected his and Bucky’s wrists. A soulbond. Something he’d never thought he’d have. He had lived a long time without ever feeling that tug. To have it with Bucky was a surprise, but not unwelcome.

Tony had continued visiting Wakanda, and Bucky, for the next year and a half. Coming as many weekends as he could get away. He’d thought spending time on a farm in a rustic little building was going to be a disaster. But, he had found contentment there. Wakanda’s technology was everywhere, even in their extremely rural areas. Tony had found a lot of fun in tinkering with the electronics there and integrating his own with those already [present. But the greatest thing there was Bucky. It was like the sun was shining on Tony’s life for the first time. Yet, they’d had so little time together. Less than two full years. They’d fought against one another before then. They had nearly not had the chance to bond at all.

Tony flinched when Thanos disappeared. No matter that he was out of range, he still expected another hit. For minutes, everything was still. No one knew what to expect, what might happen next, or where Thanos was. That he had gone to Earth was an unsettling fear. Tony couldn’t even move he was so afraid. Then, one by one, his companions drifted into the wind. He stared in disbelief. Strange, Mantis, Drax, and Star-Lord simply disintegrated and floated away. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes, one by one. And finally, Peter. Brave, young, foolish Peter. Possibly the strongest of them all, bewildered and confused and gone. The dust of them blended with the dust of Titan. Tony breathed in the remains of his friends with each inhale. Breathed them back out into the dim light of dusk. And let the tears fall.

Moments later, his heart lurched in his chest. He hadn’t realized his connection to Bucky was active enough to feel anything this far from home. Until now, when the thread that joined them started to unravel. He could feel each thread unspiral from the others like a rope fraying. Suddenly, the bond stretched and snapped. And he knew, whatever had happened here, on Titan, to the others, had also happened on Earth. Was probably still happening. A vast and immeasurable unmaking. Half of the universe. Half of all of creation. Half of Tony. Dust. Ash. Gone.

Bucky was gone.


End file.
